[ginoledesma]

I bought a Plextor 8/4/32 drive and cannot boot from it using the CDs I have, including the original Apple Software Install CD!

The Plextor drive's firmware is currently at its latest (v1.0.9) while my Mac's firmware is also updated.

Replacing the Plextor drive with the original Hitachi DVD-ROM Drive will allow me to boot through CDs again.

I've been told that Plextor drives were bootable. Odd how I can't boot from them.

I also tried pressing the OPTION key at startup to manually choose other bootable drives, but with the Plextor drive connected, the system will stall (wristwatch) forever. Removing the drive (after shutting the system down first) solves this.

Has anyone had a similar problem? Help! :-)

[Jsnuff1]

i dont know who told you but i dont believe the plexor drives are bootable

hmmm.. have you checked the drive database at www.xlr8yourmac.com ? I bought an iomega 8x4x32 and works great in my G4 gigabit. Boots from norton, OSX & OS9.1 cds perfectly. Its called a zipCD650 if you want one ! have you tryed using Intech Software CD/DVD SpeedTools 5.7 ? I heard this is what you need for 3rd party cdrs that have compatability issues.

good luck

My Powermac G4 DVD-R CD RW doesn't boot from the Apple CD either. Is this another bug introduced by the firmware update?

[ginoledesma]

Jsnuff1, I learned that Plextor drives were supposedly bootable from XLR8YourMac. Other users have had success doing so.



Sigh! I don't know if its a firmware issue thing, but I hope it is and hope that its fixable.

[Thomaz]

I have the Plextor 16/10/40A CDRW and had the same problem until I installed "Apple Authoring Support 1.1"

[GreenMnM]

Originally posted by Thomaz:
I have the Plextor 16/10/40A CDRW and had the same problem until I installed "Apple Authoring Support 1.1"

Well, that's strange, because the software loaded on your Mac should have nothing to do with booting from a CD (you should be able to boot from a CD even if there is NOTHING installed on your comptuer!). When you make a bootable CD, the CD-ROM driver is written into a special place on the CD (that's what makes it bootable... you can have a System Folder on a CD and it still won't be bootable if the CD-ROM driver isn't in the "boot blocks" of the CD).

The Authoring Support update does include a new Apple CD/DVD Driver extension. This new driver may support many newer CD drives. If the CDs you are trying to boot from don't have the newest CD-ROM driver written onto them, they may not be bootable.

What kind of Mac do you have? What CDs have you tried to boot from? If those CDs don't have the newest CD-ROM driver they wont' support your CD-R drive.


If you install the Authoring Support update and use Toast to make your own bootable CD you may be able to boot from that CD. Toast uses the CD-ROM driver that's loaded into the RAM at startup to write into the boot blocks of the CD you're burning (not the CD-ROM driver that's actually in the System Folder of your target drive). So with the newest Apple CD/DVD Driver on your CD maybe you'll have better luck.

-Doug

[This message has been edited by GreenMnM (edited 05-18-2001).]

[ginoledesma]

I think so too.

I finally managed to boot off my CD drive. But... it takes a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long time for it to do so. I'm guessing that my Plextor drive isn't "registering" itself to the Mac. The hard drive doesn't spin up yet. It takes about 1-2 minutes for the Happy Mac icon to appear with a bootable CD drive loaded. After that icon appears, the hard drive spins up.

It's probably something with my drive I guess, or maybe firmware or something.